Today in 1965, the Beatles replaced themselves atop the British single charts:
Today in 1973, the BBC banned all teen acts from “Top of the Pops” after a riot that followed a performance by … David Cassidy.
The number one single today in 1981:
Right Wisconsin asks right-wing Wisconsin pundits whether Scott Walker will, or should, run for president.
Some say yes — for instance, Brett Healy of the MacIver Institute:
What we do know is that the left is once again attacking Scott Walker and the possibility he might one day run for President because they fear him.
Scott Walker did something that is incredibly rare in today’s political world. Walker promised to fix a $3.6 billion dollar deficit without raising taxes and surprise, surprise, he actually kept his word. Walker fixed Wisconsin’s fiscal crisis by making difficult decisions that force government to live within its means, a common-sense solution that other politicians believe is impossible.
What the left is deadly afraid of is a growing number of Americans, who know what it is like to pare back their own household budget because of the uncertain times we live in, agree with Walker’s vision for government and for the future. The left also knows that Walker has an incredibly rare talent for a fiscal conservative – the ability to effectively communicate his vision and connect with regular people on a more emotional level.
Brian Sikma of Media Trackers:
Wisconsin was the pre-game for the 2012 election, but unlike November of 2012, Republicans actually won both the policy debate and the political fight here. Anybody who could win twice in a Blue State with full-fledged Democrat and union opposition deserves consideration for the GOP presidential nomination.
Jerry Bader of a radio near you:
Scott Walker has Wisconsin on a path 180 degrees divergent from President Obama’s America. By early 2015 the results of these two very different roads taken should provide a study in contrast in terms of results.
If Wisconsin is out-producing America, substantially, Scott Walker should run for President. He’ll have established Wisconsin as a model for effective conservatism; effectiveness being measured by results. A run won’t merely be politically wise; it will be a moral imperative.
David Blaska:
Americans are hungry for someone with courage to take on the public sector unions, balance a budget without raising taxes, restore an economy.I got it! His presidential campaign motto: “Scott Walker: Take Courage.”
Others say no — for instance, the proprietor of Wigderson Library & Pub, who soberly writes:
Walker’s ascendance is at a time when other conservative stars are coming of age. Unlike 2012 when Mitt Romney dominated in a Republican presidential primary campaign of political dwarfs, Republicans will have some very solid and established candidates. Senator Marco Rubio gave a speech at CPAC, too, that caused more presidential buzz. Senator Rand Paul may actually be able to bridge Republicans and libertarians. Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is leading the way on tax and education reform. Governor Chris Christie is taking on unions and special interests in his state and is getting national attention for his directness. And let’s not forget Congressman Paul Ryan who has had a taste of the national stage.Finally, while I like Walker, and truly respect him as a governor, he has no foreign policy experience or credentials. He also can’t point to an educational background that would lend credibility in that area.
As our friends on the left like to remind us, Walker did not even finish college. While there’s a compelling story (he left school to go to work), Walker is going to have a hard time convincing a certain segment of Republican primary voters to take him seriously as a result.
And then there’s, well, me:
Scott Walker will not be the president of the United States in 2016 or any other year, because no Wisconsinite will ever be elected president from either party. Wisconsin comprises essentially 2 percent of the United States — 2 percent of the population, 2 percent of the gross domestic product, etc. Wisconsin therefore is simply not significant enough in the nation for the GOP to select a Wisconsin politician for the presidential nomination. (The same applies to the Democratic Party.) Politicians from Wisconsin amass neither enough wealth nor enough national political stature (which translates to a national-level campaign financial base) to make a serious run for president. Wisconsin is also politically goofy — this state has one of the most conservative AND one of the most liberal senators in the U.S. Senate. For all but eight years since 1988, this state voted for Republican governors and Democratic presidential candidates. For that matter, this state is the home of both Fighting Bob La Follette and Joe McCarthy.
I suspect Scott Walker knows this, and therefore will not run for president.
The same applies to Paul Ryan. Or Rusty the Phony Maverick.
Surely you remember this …
The number one single today in 1961 was based on the Italian song “Return to Sorrento”:
Today in 1964, the Beatles appeared on the BBC’s “Ready Steady Go!”
During the show, Billboard magazine presented an award for the Beatles’ having the top three singles of that week.
Today in 1968, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Richie Furay and Jim Messina were all arrested by Los Angeles police not for possession of …
… but for being at a place where marijuana use was suspected.
The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady:
One might have expected a swell of pride from Argentine officialdom when the news broke that the nation has produced a man so highly esteemed around the world. Instead the Kirchner government’s pit bulls in journalism—men such as Horacio Verbitsky, a former member of the guerrilla group known as the Montoneros and now an editor at the pro-government newspaper Pagina 12—immediately began a campaign to smear the new pontiff’s character and reputation at home and in the international news media.
The calumny is not new. Former members of terrorist groups like Mr. Verbitsky, and their modern-day fellow travelers in the Argentine government, have used the same tactics for years to try to destroy their enemies—anyone who doesn’t endorse their brand of authoritarianism. In this case they allege that as the Jesuits’ provincial superior in Argentina in the late 1970s, then-Father Bergoglio had links to the military government.
This is propaganda. …
Intellectually honest observers with firsthand knowledge of Argentina under military rule (1976-1983) are telling a much different story than the one pushed by Mr. Verbitsky and his ilk. One of those observers is Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, winner of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize. Last week he told BBC Mundo that “there were bishops that were complicit with the dictatorship, but Bergoglio, no.” As to the charge that the priest didn’t do enough to free junta prisoners, Mr. Pérez Esquivel said: “I know personally that many bishops who asked the military government for the liberation of prisoners and priests and it was not granted.”
Former Judge Alicia Oliveira, who was herself fired by the military government and forced into hiding to avoid arrest, told the Argentine newspaper Perfil last week that during those dark days she knew Father Bergoglio well and that “he helped many people get out of the country.” In one case, she says there was a young man on the run who happened to look like the Jesuit. “He gave him his identification card and his [clergy attire] so that he could escape.” …
None of this matters to those trying to turn Argentina into the next Venezuela. What embitters them is that Father Bergoglio believed that Marxism (and the related “liberation theology”) was antithetical to Christianity and refused to embrace it in the 1970s. That put him in the way of those inside the Jesuit order at the time who believed in revolution. It also put him at odds with the Montoneros, who were maiming, kidnapping and killing civilians in order to terrorize the population. Many of those criminals are still around and hold fast to their revolutionary dreams.
For them, the new pope remains a meddlesome priest. In the slums where the populist Mrs. Kirchner claims to be a champion of the poor, Francis is truly beloved because he lives the gospel. From the pulpit, with the Kirchners in the pews, he famously complained of self-absorbed politicians. He didn’t name names, but the shoe fit.
Wisconsinites will be told that tomorrow is the first day of spring.
This is a lie.
There will be no spring this year. Or summer. Or fall.
This obscenity is the six- to 10-day temperature forecast, released by the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center Sunday. And this …
… is the CPC’s 8- to 14-day forecast — basically next week’s weather. As you can guess, blue means cold.
Either the CPC is incompetent, or Mother Nature is making the CPC look bad. This was the March temperature forecast released at the end of February:
How do you feel about snow?
(As you can imagine, green means wet.)
I conclude from the evidence outside — new snow and, as of tonight, single-digit temperatures — that the words “summer” and “Wisconsin” will never again be uttered in the same sentence. No more boating. No more non-ice fishing. No more driving collector cars, or motorcycles. No air conditioning. No open windows. No shorts or short-sleeve shirts. No golf or outdoor tennis. No baseball anywhere besides Miller Park with the roof closed. You might as well cancel the outdoor concerts, farmers’ markets, school summer vacation, outdoor swimming and everything else that makes this state barely livable. Soon everyone in this damnable state will look like the victims of albinism.
None of the activities in this new state Department of Tourism photo will be taking place anymore in this state (possibly to the relief of actor Robert Hays, who the commercial’s creators try to kill):
Consider this: Since Jan. 1, where I live, it has never been warmer than 43. The weather geeks use the term “degree days,” meaning the number of days above or below a certain temperature and the number of degrees below that temperature. The number of cooling degree days — days warmer than 65 — total zero. The number of growing degree days — days warmer than 50 — total zero. The average temperature as defined by heating degree days — days below 65 multiplied by the number of degrees below 65 — totals 23. One day, it was 7 below zero. People die when it’s 7 below zero.
I hate Wisconsin.
Today in 1965, Britain’s Tailor and Cutter Magazine ran a column asking the Rolling Stones to start wearing ties. The magazine claimed that their male fans’ emulating the Stones’ refusal to wear ties was threatening financial ruin for tiemakers.
To that, Mick Jagger replied:
“The trouble with a tie is that it could dangle in the soup. It is also something extra to which a fan can hang when you are trying to get in and out of a theater.”
Jagger is a graduate of the London School of Economics. Smart guy.
Today in 1974, Jefferson Airplane …
Apologists for the Obama administration claim the economy is recovering based on the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching record levels.
Which is ironic, to say the least, given that the standard Democrat/liberal/progressive line is that business is (1) a necessary evil at best that (2) must be taxed and regulated by the smarter people in Washington and the state capital nearest you. It also fails to grasp the fact that, as readers of this blog know, publicly traded companies total all of 0.1 percent of U.S. companies.
Jerry Bader passes on the Daily Reckoning‘s comparison of the DJIA’s 2007 high and today:
On the day the Dow logged its first of seven straight new highs, ZeroHedge trotted out a kind of financial “The Way We Were” — comparing today’s economic conditions to that of October, 2007, when the Dow set its previous record high:
- Dow Jones Industrial Average: Then 14164.5; Now 14164.5
- Regular Gas Price: Then $2.75; Now $3.73
- GDP Growth: Then +2.5%; Now +1.6%
- Americans Unemployed (in Labor Force): Then 6.7 million; Now 13.2 million
- Americans On Food Stamps: Then 26.9 million; Now 47.69 million
- Size of Fed’s Balance Sheet: Then $0.89 trillion; Now $3.01 trillion
- US Debt as a Percentage of GDP: Then 38%; Now 74.2%
- US Deficit (LTM): Then $97 billion; Now $975.6 billion
- Total US Debt Outstanding: Then $9 trillion; Now $16.4 trillion
- Labor Force Participation Rate: Then 65.8%; Now 63.6%
- Consumer Confidence: Then 99.5; Now 69.6
- S&P Rating of the US: Then AAA; Now AA+
- Gold: Then $748; Now $1583
In other words, the Dow made a new record high despite the economy’s performance, not because of it.
Why?
Your editor has no idea what the market knows or sees; he only knows that he doesn’t see it. What your editor does see is a stock market that the masses adore, residing in an economy that the masses abhor.
So maybe it is not hope that is driving the stock market to record highs, but despair. Maybe stocks are rallying because investors are afraid to do anything else with their capital — maybe they are afraid to risk their capital in an economy that features zero interest rates, stifling regulatory regimes and capricious tax laws.
Bottom line; the Dow’s record-setting performance tells us nothing about “why.” The stock market is silent on this point. Perhaps it is too terrified to speak. …
One thing we know; the rallying stock market stands in stark contrast to the bear market in economic vitality. We also know that bull markets are unfolding in all the wrong places. Unemployment, government debt, food stamp participation, “No knock” SWAT raids and “No trial” drone strikes are all in bull market mode.
The fact that the Dow, priced in gold, remains very far away from a record, suggests that Chairman Bernanke is working overtime. His dollar-printing escapades have played a very big hand in the Dow’s record-setting climb. By devaluing the dollar, in other words, Bernanke “inflated” the Dow price.
The second and last paragraphs are the “why,” I believe. The ordinary investor should be in the stock market as a long-term investment, and not make decisions based on what one stock, or the entire market, does over one particular short period of time. The aforementioned “zero interest rates, stifling regulatory regimes and capricious tax laws” may indeed make the stock market seem like a safe short-term investment too in comparison to other potential investments.
Sheldon Richman of the Future of Freedom Foundation adds:
The Federal Reserve is working hard to keep key interest rates close to zero. The Fed has bought hundreds of billions of dollars in long-term government securities (“Operation Twist”) in order to lower the return from such investments. This drives money seeking a bigger return into the stock market and commodities. If this explains the run-up in stock prices, it sounds more like a bubble than a marker of returning economic growth.
The government and its central bank, in fact, have done virtually everything wrong if their intention was to put the economy on a sustainable path to prosperity. …
This is a dangerous path. By definition, such artificially induced frenzies cannot be sustained. When officials get nervous and pull back, the bubbles will burst and the economy will be back in recession. Even if employment gains are made during the apparent recovery, they will be short-lived, and the unemployment rate will turn up again. This government policy, therefore, is a cruel hoax on workers who were harmed by the earlier recession, who have struggled to get back on track, and who are now being set up for a reprise of their misery.
The architects of this shameful program are would-be social engineers who think they can design something as complex as a modern industrial economy. Such conceit should be obvious to all. Simply put, it is impossible for politicians, bureaucrats, and economic advisers to acquire the knowledge they would need to possess in order to accomplish what they say they want to accomplish. The knowledge most vital for smooth-running markets is not aggregate statistical data available to government agencies. Rather, it consists in the subjective preferences of consumers, the expectations of producers, and the radically decentralized and dispersed information about resources, technologies, and techniques. The market’s price system captures and conveys this information in a way that government operatives could never dream of. In fact, compared to the collective wisdom of the market process, politicians, bureaucrats, and economic advisers are dismal ignoramuses.
Others have used words like “corporatist” to describe the Obama administration’s attitude toward business — in favor of big corporations like Government Motors — I mean “General Motors” — and opposed to small businesses that employ most Americans. A rising stock market in the midst of a crappy economy would be evidence of that.
But this stock market “record” means less than it appears because of devaluation of the dollar, which shows up in share prices, on which the DJIA, S&P 500 and other stock indexes are based. Today’s $1 is equivalent to 1963’s 13 cents. Even in an era of historically low inflation, $1 in 1988 is equivalent to $1.99 today, which means the dollar’s value has dropped in half since I entered the workforce.
This chart demonstrates that the real Dow high was back in 2000, correctly measured for inflation. That was back in the days when the budget was somewhat balanced and the dollar was much stronger than today. As Fred the Intelligent Bear puts it, “It is amazing what massive government spending and quantitative easing can do to boost the stock market.”
If you’re making investment decisions based on what you think is a recovering, growing economy, you may come to regret those decisions.
Today in 1965, the members of the Rolling Stones were fined £5 for urinating in a public place, specifically a gas station after a concert in Romford, England.
Today in 1967, Britain’s New Musical Express magazine announced that Steve Winwood, formerly of the Spencer Davis Group, was forming a group with Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood and Dave Mason, to be called Traffic.
This being St. Patrick’s Day, we should have a bit o’ the Irish, including a video I first watched while eating corned beef at an Irish bar in Cuba City today in 1993 …
… plus Van Morrison …
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 